White Paper

As time marches on, many of the influences on our businesses change as well. This change alone is a great reason to frequently review your operations and make sure you are employing the very best practices in every facet of your business operations. In a recent research study conducted by Vanson Bourne trucking professionals reported that only 61% of their companies had conducted any type of process re-engineering effort in the previous 12 months. That leaves 39% of transportation operations as a whole (33% of private fleets and 53% of for-hire operations) that have not made a focused efort to innovate and improve their operational processes.

When you contrast that static approach to business against constantly evolving regulatory requirements, you have an obvious disconnect. For example, let’s take a topic like commercial vehicle inspections. All commercial fleets perform them since they are required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) initiative (1). Yet, how many companies execute these inspections and reports in a manner that not only improves the fleet’s Vehicle Maintenance BASIC score, but also improves the efficiency of the operation, positively impacting everything from driver performance to customer satisfaction?

Over the last year, the FMCSA has issued nearly five times more imminent-hazard out-of-service orders than it did in fiscal 2011 (2). And small fleets, which can range from one to a few hundred trucks, are seven times more likely to be inspected.